Cycles of the Moon
Cycles of the Moon is a puzzle encountered by the party in the tunnels below Ironstone while they were attempting to breach the inner chamber of an ancient ruin, presumably linked with the Precursors. Context Previous to the puzzle, the party had fought two ancient clockwork golems and retrieved four small crystal orbs, each resembling the moon in various states. These orbs are crafted of dark, clear glass and opaque, white glass in four different patterns The Puzzle The players step into a large dome-shaped room sixty feet in diameter and height. It is quite dark but the ceiling of the room is lit up to look like the night sky. It is covered in dozens of shining stars in a sea of black, but there is no moon to be seen. Along the walls, perfectly spaced at 90 degrees apart from one another, are four carvings that show the moon in four states: * New Moon * Crescent Moon * Gibbous Moon * Full Moon Ten feet in front of each of these carvings are pedestals with small indentations that appear to be designed to hold the orbs the players found earlier. (Placing the corresponding spheres in front of the carvings does nothing for now.) In the center of the room is a rectangular column that extends all the way into the darkness of the ceiling. Each side of this column has a tube sticking out of it that is pointing directly at one of the pedestals, exuding no light. The Solution To solve this puzzle the party needs to shine lights that match the engravings on the wall. To do so, they will need to do a few things: * Find a way to open the tubes at the center of the room. This is simply done by pulling slightly on the tubes causing a small latch to open. Inside each tube is a dim, faded crystal that sheds a tiny amount of light. * Replace the burnt out bulbs in the tubes at the center of the room. This is done by harvesting the stars from the ceiling which are in fact just more of these crystals that have not lost their charge. The players will need to find a way up to the 60 ft. ceiling (climbing the central column is the obvious method) but the walls of the room should be scalable as well with some effort. * Once the players have the new crystals, they simply need to screw them into the tubes and it will project light out to the wall. Then the opposing Moon Orb will need to be placed on the pedestals. So to project a Full Moon on the wall, they need to place the New Moon orb in the pedestal, because the darker, clear glass portions of the orb are what allow light to pass through. Placing all the correct pieces in the right order caused the wall on the opposite side of the one they came through to slide open, revealing the passageway into the next chamber. Category:Literature __FORCETOC__